A complete system comprising sensors, actuators, and controllers used to control HVAC, lighting, security, and safety in a building is called a Building Control System (BCS). Modern Building Control Systems comprise a large number of networked devices (e.g. sensors, lighting elements, light switches, valves, HVAC equipment, security equipment, etc). The most advanced buildings are approaching one networked device installed per square meter. Commissioning Building Control Systems is increasingly becoming labor-intensive and is prone to errors. For example, it has been shown that the technical installations in 70% of the utility buildings in the Netherlands do not function according to specification, causing an increase in energy consumption of 25%.
Commissioning involves joining devices into a network, localizing these devices and establishing control relationships between them. The latter is also called configuration. For example, a valve controlling the heating unit in a particular room must be controlled based on the temperature readings obtained from the temperature sensor in that very same room. Or, similarly, the light switch and the light sensor in a room must be used to control the lighting elements in that room.
A current practice in commissioning Building Control Systems is to separate the process of localization from the process of configuration (i.e. establishing control relationships). The existing approach towards localization is to manually identify a particular device, for example, by pulling a barcode sticker (i.e. unique ID) off that device and sticking it on the technical drawing of the building next to the symbol representing that very device. Subsequently, this association between sticker and symbol is input into the building commissioning system through further manual intervention (this is a time-consuming and error-prone task). Configuration is done afterwards by interacting with the building commissioning system (typically by means of a PC).
WO 2009/128001 A2 describes an improved method of localization. The location of a particular device is inferred from a specific sequence of reading electronic identification tags. However, also in this case, manual configuration is performed after this localization, for example, by using a PC. Performing localization for the entire building from behind a centralized (remote) PC is indirect, non-intuitive, and error-prone.
Some existing systems enable a more direct establishment of control relationships. For example, EnOcean switches can be configured to work with lamps through setting dip-switches. It is also known to establish a control relationship between two devices by pressing a button on each device within a limited time period from each other. However, such procedures are quite cumbersome.
In WO2010/032227A1 a method is described to establish a control relationship between, for example, a light switch and a lamp, simply by the bringing the lamp in close proximity of—i.e. “touching”—the light switch. In this case, an NFC-tag attached to the lamp is read by an NFC reader built into the light switch and the information read is used by the light switch to subsequently establish the control relationship. Furthermore, the concept of a tag echoing tool is described, covering the cases where bringing the lamp and the light switch in close proximity is impractical (for example when both are already mounted). This tag echoing tool first reads the NFC-tag attached to the lamp and then presents effectively a copy of that tag to the NFC reader in the light switch. Although this method of establishing control relationships by means of NFC-technology is direct, intuitive, and user-friendly (and therefore also less prone to errors), it requires a full-blown NFC reader in at least one of the devices for which a control relationship is to be established (in this example, in each light switch). This increases the cost of such a device and may furthermore negatively impact its power budget. The latter may particularly be an issue for energy-harvesting devices. Also, it is not possible to establish control relationships between a group of devices that all just have a mere NFC-tag (for example, it is not possible to easily group a set of lamps together enabling joint control). Furthermore, the lack of rich user interaction means during the procedure may make the establishment of more complex control relationships, for example involving multiple devices, or the performing of alternate operations, for example de-establishing a control relationship, less intuitive. Finally, although the lamp may be unpowered while being configured, the light switch always needs to be powered while being configured.